A posthumous country music novel on the conflict between commerce and art. Hillbilly singer Danny MacGregor must decide whether to sing commercials or devote himself to folk music, like his sweetheart. The time is 1949, the setting North Carolina and the novel analyzes a problem that is still with us, the destruction of genuine folk music by urbanization and commercial folk music.
Uproariously funny and filled with choice narration, The Big Ballad Jamboree is Donald Davidson's only novel. He set his story- the romance of hillbilly and country singer Danny MacGregor with folk singer and ballad scholar Cissy Timberlake- in the fictional western North Carolina town of Carolina City during the summer of 1949. The late forties, just after WWII and before the rise of national television, are great years for classic country music on live radio. Yet this Appalachian community is struggling to embrace a modern commercial economy without losing its folk heritage. In this setting Davidson draws lively satirical pictures: civic boosters allied with shameless politicians; a local sheriff, a barber, and a dean cooperating to protect the image of a college; a folklore professor seeking fame by promoting a ballad-singing bootlegger. Seen through the eyes of a country boy with a musical gift descended from mountain people, this novel is a highbrow art about memorable lowbrow characters. It is also a great read. Those who know Davidson as a poet and scholar may be surprised to learn that he wrote a novel about country music. Here his long romance with southern folk life and mountain balladry captures the evolution of hillbilly singers into Grand Ole Opery stars as he pursues vexing questions about folk authenticity in country music. Long thought lost, The Big Ballad Jamboree now is published for the first time. The famous teacher of young writers as Robert Penn Warren, Jesse Stuart, and Elizabeth Spencer never saw publication of his own novel. The mystery of its fate resolved at long last with the publication of the complete manuscript, discovered by a granddaughter in family files.
A posthumous country music novel on the conflict between commerce and art. Hillbilly singer Danny MacGregor must decide whether to sing commercials or devote himself to folk music, like his sweetheart. The time is 1949, the setting North Carolina and the novel analyzes a problem that is still with us, the destruction of genuine folk music by urbanization and commercial folk music.
Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren, Volume three, provides an indispensable glimpse of Warren the writer and the man, covering a crucial decade in his life. Edited by Randy Hendricks and James A. Perkins, and introduced by William Bedford Clark, this collection of largely previously unpublished letters and newly discovered material documents Warren's time at the University of Minnesota, his writing and publication of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel All the King's Men, his appointment as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, and his divorce from Emma “Cinina” Brescia and subsequent marriage to the writer Eleanor Clark. The period 1943–1952 also saw the publication of “A Poem of Pure Imagination”; World Enough and Time; The Ballad of Billie Potts; At Heaven's Gate; and Selected Poems, 1923–1943. Warren's letters shed new light on those works and on his close relationship with his editors Lambert Davis and Albert Erskine. Included too is correspondence concerning Warren's collaboration with Robert Rossen on the movie production of All the King's Men, which received the Academy Award for best picture in 1949. The list of friends and colleagues with whom Warren communicated reads like a roll call of major twentieth-century literary figures and clearly shows his ever-widening influence on the world of letters. Spanning a remarkable range in both style and tone, the letters disclose Warren's attitudes toward his work as a teacher and his thoughts on the events of World War II, the Korean War, and the political conflicts in postwar Europe. Thoroughly annotated and scrupulously researched, Volume Three captures Warren in an extraordinary phase in his life and career, reaching his maturity and making many commitments at once yet pursuing them all with a seemingly boundless energy.
A “educational, interesting, and very easy to read” history of the bond between country music and politics in America (Harry Reid). Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music. In I’d Fight the World, Peter La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics, from the nineteenth-century rise of fiddler-politicians to more recent figures like Pappy O’Daniel, Roy Acuff, and Rob Quist. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some advocated for the poor and dispossessed, and others voiced religious and racial anger, but they all walked the line between exploiting their celebrity and righteously taking on the world. La Chapelle vividly shows how country music campaigners have profoundly influenced the American political landscape. Praise for I’d Fight the World “Thoroughly researched and insightful, I’d Fight the World exposes the political themes embedded in country music of all stripes, as well as the sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant, always shrewd employment of this music by politicians. La Chapelle reveals a political legacy in country music that today’s audiences have an obligation to confront.” —Jocelyn Neal, author of Country Music: A Cultural and Stylistic History “In this well-written and expansive book, La Chapelle narrates a national history of politics and country music, from nineteenth-century populism to post–World War II conservatism. I’d Fight the World demonstrates how both political and cultural history can shine light upon each other, creating a rich tapestry of scholarship.” —David Gilbert, author of The Product of Our Souls “Lively and informative. . . . This book will surprise those who have preconceived notions about country music and Southern politicians, and their longstanding connection.” —Library Journal “A deeply researched examination of the ways that country and old-time music have been coopted into political life. . . . La Chapelle traces the not especially healthy relationship between country music and populism. . . . La Chapelle’s exhaustive examination of his subject uncovers many untold stories and raises interesting questions about whether country music has yet truly reckoned with its political past.” —Times Literary Supplement
The 1950s witnessed both the birth of both rock and roll and the creation of Southern literature as we know it. Around the time that Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley put their electric spin on Southern vernacular ballads, a canonical group of white American authors native to rock’s birthplace began to write fiction about the electrification of those ballads, translating into literary form key cultural changes that gave rise to the infectious music coming out of their region. In Novel Sounds, Florence Dore tells the story of how these forms of expression became intertwined and shows how Southern writers turned to rock music and its technologies—tape, radio, vinyl—to develop the “rock novel.” Dore considers the work of Southern writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and William Styron alongside the music of Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, and Bob Dylan to uncover deep historical links between rock and Southern literature. Along with rock pioneers, Southern authors drew from blues, country, jazz, and other forms to create a new brand of realism that redefined the Southern vernacular as global, electric, and notably white. Resurrecting this Southern literary tradition at the birth of rock, Dore clarifies the surprising but unmistakable influence of rock and roll on the American novel. Along the way, she explains how literature came to resemble rock and roll, an anti-institutional art form if there ever was one, at the very moment academics claimed literature for the institution.
Authors discussed include: Wendell Berry, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, Zora Neal Hurston, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, and many more. By World War II, the Southern Renaissance had established itself as one of the most significant literary events of the century, and today much of the best American fiction is southern fiction. Though the flowering of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, the period between the two world wars was the crucial one for the South's literary development: a literary revival in Richmond came to fruition; at Vanderbilt University a group of young men produced The Fugitive, a remarkable, controversial magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run; and the publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. With more than forty years of experience writing and reading about the subject, and friendships with many of the figures discussed, J. A. Bryant is uniquely qualified to provide the first comprehensive account of southern American literature since 1900. Bryant pays attention to both the cultural and the historical context of the works and authors discussed, and presents the information in an enjoyable, accessible style. No lover of great American literature can afford to be without this book.
This publication will fill a gap in the bibliographic reference shelf by identifying historical novels for both adult and young adult readers. ^IAmerican Historical Fiction^R contains over 3,000 titles set in states and historical regions of the United States. Entries are organized by time period. The newest titles, as well as old favorites, are covered. The volume is indexed by author, title, genre, subject, and geographic setting.
